Finding Success Staying True to Your Goals (Pt. 5) Building Your Future Now

Finding Success Staying True to Your Goals (Pt. 5) Building Your Future Now Sometimes we get stuck. Whether it be creatively or professionally, we feel that we can not grow. One of those situations we get stuck in is our job. Its easy to get stuck at a job because your get comfortable. Its understandable, but give yourself a minute to think: is it something you want to be stuck in for the rest of your life? The answer is more than likely No. No one wants to be in a job that isnt going anywhere and isnt fun. You definitely have bills to pay, but can you find a way to do what you really want? The answer is Yes. You can have a career that you want, but you must lay the groundwork to making it happen. It all starts with being true to yourself and your goals. If you want to be a writer you must find ways to become one. It takes time and patience, howeverhow does the thought of doing something that you love appeal to you? So it all starts with making the effort to get there. Start today and it starts with what you ultimately want out of life. Image: Melissa Juarez

Volunteer Resume Writing - Tips to Help You Start a Career As a Resume Writer

Volunteer Resume Writing - Tips to Help You Start a Career As a Resume WriterVolunteer resume writing is becoming very popular these days. As the services of these organizations have been expanded, the demand for qualified volunteers has also increased and they need to find a way to recruit qualified individuals. In fact, this is not an easy task because it involves a lot of time and effort.Volunteers need to be able to write professionally because if they are not up to the mark, they cannot be trusted for that job. There are companies who pay people to write resumes for these organizations. There are companies who hire people to do this on a regular basis. So it is important to do your research and get the best deal available.Volunteers who want to write resumes and cover letters should consider looking for opportunities on a regular basis. In other words, if you join a specific organization, it is likely that the company will not have vacancies that allow you to take on that respon sibility. If you are a regular contributor to this organization, chances are that they will have vacancies that allow you to fill in those positions as a volunteer.Volunteering for a day is a great way to help. If you are a writer, this type of opportunity would be ideal because you can make money doing something you love. You could also do it full-time if you choose to or there are many other options for working as a freelancer.Resume writing for a volunteer can be challenging. However, the rewards can be well worth the work involved. Not only can you enjoy the pleasure of writing, but you also have the opportunity to help people in need. The experience you gain with writing a resume can prove to be a life-long learning experience.It is always a good idea to do some research before you begin. While you are creating your resume, try to narrow down the items that you need to include. You can also use templates so that you can avoid adding any extra words that you did not need.There i s nothing wrong with providing additional information on an agency that you have signed up with, especially if the company is already involved in a project with you. It is important to make sure that the company knows that you are already a part of their network. In other words, if you are going to be listed as a contributor on the site, make sure you are included in the events, activities, and activities that the company is involved in.As you start your career as a writer, it is best to recruit the right volunteers for your service. This way, you can ensure that you are able to maximize your skills and experience.

UX Researchers Differences of Method and Methodology - Algrim.co

UX Researchers Differences of Method and Methodology - Algrim.co So, what is UX Research? UX Research, as the name says, is the research of user-experience. It is the analysis of user behavior when interacting with a product within an environment. UX Researchers get product design cues during a development phase by examining and interpreting how people react to their experience. UX Research helps understand users and their needs which later translate as requirements of the product. Before a product steps to the market, it goes through a rigorous process of trial and testing backed by large amounts of gathered information. The information can be anything related to market and customers. Market trends. Annual product sales. Product Preferences. This collected information acts as the foundation for product development. In commercial terms, for a product to be termed successful, it has to attain high sales and revenue. In consumer terms, a product is successful when It satisfies the needs of the customer while being user-friendly. UX Research deals with the user-friendly aspect of the product. Ease of operation, design ergonomics all come under UX Research. There are several ways of gathering information for product research. UX Researchers used a variety of techniques to obtain market information to help in the refinement of the developing product. Here are some of the methods: Interview Interviews are the purest form of gathering information. All one does for an interview is to ask questions to the participant and record their responses. These responses in the form of facts and opinions shed some light over the probable features/requirements of the product. Though the simplest, interviews are not the most efficient way to conduct research, especially when there’s a looming deadline on the horizon as the process is slow and time-consuming. Still, the interview is the basic form of research. Contextual interview Though interviews reveal many customer preferences, there’s always the risk of missing out on some of the minute details. Details that even the user themselves might not be aware of when responding to an interview verbally. Contextual interviews are interview based on the action responses to equipment. These interviews add functional responses to personal interviews. These interviews aim for real interaction between user and equipment/interface without interference from any foreign factor. This process lets the researcher attain more information and know about things such as the interactive aspect of the product in real-time, user preferences. Diary Studies Sometimes interviews do not provide vital information that could help in product development. Take, for example, a pair of shoes. The above two interviews cannot tell the researcher about the usage pattern of shoes. It varies from person to person. In such cases, we need day-to-day usage record from users to calculate the average lifespan of the shoes to design. Hence, for these cases, diary studies are more suitable. Diary Studies monitor daily activities of the participants. It acts as a logger for user movement on a day-to-day basis. Tracking daily user activities helps researchers learn about the behavior patterns of a user, which could further translate to product requirements. Card Sorting Card sorting is about grouping topics into categories. Users are provided with topics and asked to organize them based on their preferences. This method helps prioritize investment of resources on requirements of the product. Alternatively, one can use this when uncertain about what could be the main requirements of the product. Card sorting lets you know which features/requirements (topics) hold more priority than others. Hence, it would aid in planning out the resource allocation over the product development. Apart from prioritization of features, it also helps to get an insight over user preferences. Usability Testing Usability testing is a much more concentrated form of a contextual interview. While contextual interviews provide the free will to interact, usability testing sees users perform a specific task. For example, it is not just having a look at microwave and pouring out your impressions. It is about performing a particular operation like setting up the temperature or installing the tray and providing feedback. Users are monitored in real-time performing an assigned task, and the researcher records the observations. It is a process of product/service evaluation by testing with user representatives. Moreover, since it is a real-time user interaction monitoring, it is easier to detect problems that need tweaking to enhance the user experience. Why is UX Research important? One may ask why do all this research? Isn’t research just a waste of time and money? Here’s another example. Say, you ask for a pen to your brother, and he gives you an eraser. Alternatively, you need a shirt, and he gives you a trouser. Would you be satisfied? Think of yourself as the customer and your brother as a company. A company will survive only when it meets market demands. There’s no point in creating a product or service that does not have a need in the market. It is neither beneficial for the company nor the customer, as the product won’t sell and generate revenue and the customers would not have their need or demands met. Research prevents the creation of a wrong product. It lets the development team know what the customer wants in a new product, or how they can improve an existing product. It acts as a safety net within which the development of the product should go on. It also helps clear the smokescreen, i.e. unknowns from the design process. A bit of research into the market pays out to steer clear of hiccups in the product design process because of uncertain parameters. Research appropriately done even saves you time and money. How? A thorough investigation will reveal more market secrets than you could have expected. What it helps avoid is future problem solving due to unexpected factors emerging down the line during the development. Hence, in-depth research minimizes the chance of error rectification in the future. Last but not least, research will guide you to the right product for the right people. Apt analysis helps find more befitting customers who would be suitable for your product than your earlier market expectation. Method and Methodology There is an aspect of UX Research that even the people related to it get it mixed. Method and Methodology. Both have ‘method’ in them, so it is quite convincing to alternate their uses, but that is not right. Method and Methodology, both have very different identities, and we shall discuss that now. Method Methods are any activity or tool that help in conducting research. Some examples are surveys, diary study, card sorting, and interview. The use of techniques is what results in the collection of data either from the market or directly from the user. Research methods are the only entity that gets customers involved in product development. Methods are of two types: quantitative (numerical) and qualitative (why, how, what). Quantitative method Quantitative methods work along with statistical data to aid market research. Here are some of the quantitative research methods: Quantitative Usability Testing This method deals with tracking usability over a specified period and helps in competitor comparison. It is a behavioral method, meaning people’s action is responsible for data creation. Hence, it is task-based with a moderate cost involved along with average difficulty in data collection and analysis. A/B Testing or Multivariate Testing A/B Testing helps compare two design options. It is live behavioral testing of two different versions of the same product to know which version works the best. It is a low-cost method because of simple data collection and analysis. Tree Testing Tree Testing is a form of evaluating information-architecture hierarchies in a product. It is also a behavioral and task-based method where participants need to accomplish the task only using the product structure. This method helps examine and identify structural anomalies that might not fit the user’s expectations. Qualitative method Qualitative methods deal with uncountable information (reasoning why, how and what) in researches. The following are some of the qualitative research methods: Ethnographic Field Study It involves interacting and observing with people performing tasks in their environment. Unlike contextual interview where the user only interacts with the equipment, the user is free to interact with the whole environment. This study helps researchers understand how people’s day-to-day behavior gets affected by the surroundings, and use the information to solve a problem via a product. Focus groups Focus groups are debates among a group of people from a target market regarding matters involving a potential product or service. Further, there are three classifications of Method: First method. It relates to data collection. The first method helps in making decisions when the amount of data present is not sufficient for any verdict. Second method. These are the processes of analyzing data. They help in building relations between data and unknown elements. Third method. It helps in checking the accuracy of derived results. Methodology A methodology is the system or study of methods to solve a research problem. It is about learning the right way of conducting researches systematically. In simple terms, a methodology is the method of study of methods. Methodology is much more qualitative focused. It is about finding a reason for the way things are in existence. It testifies the reason for using a particular method or technique in research. Alternatively, it helps to understand why a specific method was used in the research process. To understand them better, here are some examples. Phenomenology Phenomenology is the act of study of the relation between human existence and the environment. It helps to understand how human beings form a part of the broader background around them. The study of this relationship between humans and their environment can help answer questions about how, why and what of the human-environment interactions, hence, help develop a product with a better user experience. Grounding Theory Grounding Theory is used when there is the need to explain a process, but not to test an existing theory. It is useful when we need to study social interactions or experiences from the ground up, i.e. derived from a systematic analysis of raw data. Ground Theory comes good when there is a requirement to explain elements based on a set of data without any pre-existing notions. Participatory Participatory, as the name suggests, lets end-users participate in the product development process. Its forte, direct involvement of customers results in better information acquisition and feedback to polish the process until its final iteration to provide a product experience which aligns with the expectations of the user. Research is a vital aspect of product creation. It is not something a company can term ‘wasteful’. Research brings the markets along with customer closer to the procedure of product creation. From customer’s perspective, it allows them to express their needs as feedback and information to the company for creation of best product possible. Method and Methodology are two different aspects of research. Methods help conduct research, while Methodologies deal with the study of processes. While Method helps collect data, Methodologies helps reason why the specific method is used for analysis.

Is it OK to be different at work than you are at home

Is it OK to be different at work than you are at home A couple of days ago, Louise Fletcher, a professional resume writer, blogged about my ability to say whatever I want and not kill my career. That same day, Kathy Williams wrote this comment on my blog: My son introduced me to your blog which I appreciate. I am your polar opposite. You have complete freedom to say whatever you want for whatever reason is not important. We can all use a little more honesty. In general, I think people can say much more than they think they can. It used to be that no one blogged about unemployment, bad bosses or screaming at their kids. Now these are all pretty common posts. This should tell you that topics that you think will change what people think about you dont actually do that. Consider what youre doing if its within the realm of normal, people dont care that youre doing itits not interesting. Of course, things that I think are totally normal, like,  having a miscarriage at work, turn out to be  very controversial. But really,  I am still not sure why. I mean, just thinking logically, hundreds of thousands of women have miscarriages every year, and most of those women have not had a kid so they are working, so hundreds of thousands of women each year have a miscarriage at work. I think my inability to understand why this is controversial might be a blessing. I also am not sure I understand privacy. I dont understand why people use it. I have had a lot of talks with the farmer about this. He told me that we cannot be intimate if we dont have some things that are private. So I told him I would not write about sex. But then I wrote sort of about sex. I wrote about when he wouldnt go down on me. I told him it was me writing about not sex. And sex is off limits but not sex is not off limits. He was not happy. Im sure most of you will agree with him. That I should not have written about that. But then I think, he has known, since before he even met me, that I write about everything. And then, when he met me, he read my novel, which is not a novel but really a memoir that the publisher made me call a novel because no one would believe it was true.   But it is not really a novel either, but a hypertext wishing it were a novel, which is what Publishers Weekly wrote when they said it was great writing with incompetent structure. The problem of me not understanding intimacy is maybe because I dont understand why we separate ourselves to be different people at different times. I dont think I am able to manage being different versions of myself depending on the social context. So everyone gets the same version of me. I have found, for example, that venture capitalists like my blog. After all, they have invested in my company. But its not just the investment. They tell me they like my blog and they like the blog posts that say things were not supposed to say. Like, I cant handle my insane travel schedule, and my company is running out of money and I want to fucking kill the investor who is sailing in Bermuda without a phone to hear me panicking. Investors like that. Because they like honesty. People like honesty. They might wince, but they dont generally hold honesty against you. What people do hold against me, I think, is that I dont seem to be able to create intimacy with the farmer. Its a downfall, I think. But I also think that thats why he picked me. He read my writing, about sex with every other guy, when he first started dating me. (Thats probably why he dumped me. Well, one of the fifty reasons he dumped me fifty times. And, by the way, he hates that I always have a different number for the number of times he dumped me. But I tell him you dont care. Whatever number it is, you get the point. Fifty million.) He knew I had never really been able to be intimate because I was too fascinated with writing about my inability to be intimate which requires writing about what should be intimate moments. I want to tell you about this costume he bought for me. Well, actually, I bought it. He chose it. Its a costume called €Å"Alice€  like, Alice in Wonderland. But its a different Wonderland. We bought it when we were costume shopping with the kids. I told him I couldnt stand all the sword fighting in the Star Wars section. Then I came back to the Star Wars section and told him I found a section for grown-ups. €Å"Lets get one,€  I said. €Å"You said you wouldnt wear one of those.€  €Å"Well, I will. Which do you like?€  €Å"All of them.€  There were about 50 costumes. I picked one. I called him over to look. The dressing room was in the middle of the room, so I opened the curtain just a peek. The kids came running over and said, €Å"Mommy! I love your costume!€  The farmer said, €Å"No. Thats terrible.€  He said that the key to a costume like this is to have a lot of space between the bottom of the skirt and the top of the tights. They are garter belt tights. Okay. So I try on the other costume, and its the Alice costume, and we get it. And the boys spend the next month asking me if Im going to wear it trick or treating. I wear it to bed. It is intimate, but it feels intimate because Im doing something Ive never done before. It doesnt feel any more intimate to me than founding a company feels. I know my Brazen Careerist co-founders, Ryan and Ryan, are going to freak out when they read that line. But they dont have to worry because what I really mean is that nothing feels truly intimate to me. And I kind of like it that way because I dont have to have lots of different versions of myself. I dont have to separate being a mom from being a blogger. I dont have to separate being Alice from being a startup founder. Its all the same me. A lot of commenters accuse me of being a nutcase  because one day I am breaking a lamp over my head and the next day I am dispensing advice about effective elevator pitches. To me though, someone is a nutcase for pretending to not be both those people. Each of us can give good advice on something. And each of us has a messed up personal life sometimes. One person can do both those things. The only thing weird is that we dont admit it. Why cant career advisors also talk about the things going wrong in their lives? Why cant startup founders also be sex kittens? What I know is that I am really really grateful for not having to hide who I am at work. It is true, what Louise said, that I can say whatever I want, as long as Im interesting. I can still make a living, and I can still have friends. (Well, Im not that great at friends, but hypothetically I can have friends because there are people who have told me they want to be my friend.) So I think the farmer picked me because Im bad at intimacy. He is bad at it, too. He is comfortable with thatnot being close to me. So we are comfortable with our non-intimacy. I mean, I say that, but I know there is more to life. I just cant seem to find it.

Writing a Resume For the First Time

Writing a Resume For the First TimeIf you're trying to figure out how to write a resume for the first time, then you've come to the right place. In this article, I'm going to give you some tips on how to do that. I'll discuss what is important, what goes into it, and what to look for when reviewing a resume.Your first step in writing a resume is to sit down and write down everything you know about yourself. Think about all of the areas of expertise you have. Your field of expertise could be anything from Public Relations to Sports Management, but that's not the only area that you should include in your resume.Nowadays, the average person has become busy and they tend to drift into the non-corporate world. So, how can you really get ahead in the work world if you don't even know where you're going? Your resume will be your gateway to the future. When people see it, they will want to know more about you and how you will fit into their career.The next thing you need to do is go back and review your resume. You will want to make sure it has all of the relevant information. It's a good idea to be realistic about what you can really do. But if you don't have any specific expectations then that's ok too.One of the most important things to include in your resume is the job objective. This is something that will inform the recruiter about your career goals. It will also let them know what you're looking for from your career.Be sure to include some personal information as well. The most important information includes your education and training. For example, if you went to a very prestigious university, that will be helpful to the recruiter. Don't omit this information, because it will help determine your chances of being offered the job.Your contact information is also very important. Make sure you include the name and email address of the person who will be handling your hiring needs. That way, if the job goes through, they will be able to contact you immediately.The m ost important thing to remember is to be thorough. Don't make a mistake and not include the important information. Be sure to go back and review your resume at least once after you receive it. That way, you'll know exactly what was needed and what wasn't.

Selling by giving - The Chief Happiness Officer Blog

Selling by giving - The Chief Happiness Officer Blog I was asked by Paul Thornton to contribute to a booklet hes writing called How to Succeed in Todays Business World. Paul wanted to know the best piece of business advice Ive ever received. This is what I submitted: One day, quite by accident, I found an article on the internet by some crazy Lithuanian guy called Andrius Kulikauskas. As if his name wasnt strange enough in itself, the article examines what it would mean to give everything away. The premise of the article was this: I accept the idea that I should give everything away. The challenge is to put this into practice. This is a design problem for personal life and social economy. We can venture attempts and draw experience from them. My intent is to clarify the problem and offer solutions, especially by documenting ideas that have proven helpful in giving everything away. This sparked the idea of selling through giving, and that has been the single most efficient and fun sales tool I have ever tried. In every single sales situation I face, I ask myself this question: What can I give? Its clear that I cant give everything away. I couldnt make a living if I did. But I repeatedly and reliably find that the more I give away, the more I get back. That my sales results are directly proportional to my generosity. Not to mention the fact that approaching any situation with an intent to give is much more fulfilling, natural and fun, making selling by giving not only more efficient but also more dare I say it ? giving. Thanks for visiting my blog. If you're new here, you should check out this list of my 10 most popular articles. And if you want more great tips and ideas you should check out our newsletter about happiness at work. It's great and it's free :-)Share this:LinkedInFacebookTwitterRedditPinterest Related

Goal-free in Copenhagen - The Chief Happiness Officer Blog

Goal-free in Copenhagen - The Chief Happiness Officer Blog Yesterday Stephen Shapiro and I toured Copenhagen by land and by water. Steve fell in love with the city, especially Christiania, the canals and smorrebrod from Ida Davidsen. In the afternoon it was time for Steve to present Goal-Free Living to the Danes, and the presentation was a smash hit. There are lots of pictures from the presentation here. Thanks for visiting my blog. If you're new here, you should check out this list of my 10 most popular articles. And if you want more great tips and ideas you should check out our newsletter about happiness at work. It's great and it's free :-)Share this:LinkedInFacebookTwitterRedditPinterest Related